


hints of gravity and tenderness

by crescendi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, strilondes are half siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 09:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17261690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescendi/pseuds/crescendi
Summary: New York City in 1926 is not the home of the Roaring Twenties without reason. It’s flush with money and music, the entertainment capital of the world. The Midnight Crew slinks in the shadows, slowing climbing the ranks of the underworld. Women with blonde bobs and flapper dresses run speakeasies. The Macbeth Gallery’s doors are open.Sollux Captor and Aradia Megido are struggling artists in this backdrop, although ‘struggling’ may be a subjective term. Of course, it’s a one-sided rivalry at first sight.





	hints of gravity and tenderness

**Author's Note:**

> title from [this poem.](http://boykeats.tumblr.com/post/140260002292/graffiti-artists-rough-draft-by-keaton-st-james)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is short im sorry
> 
> and im not sure about the japanese so like if anyone can get a better translation
> 
> edit 1/28/2019; added more content, search: it was the stage

_It is hard to talk about Aradia Megido and Sollux Captor’s works without discussing the other’s. Thus, the Megido-Captor Museum was opened in their honor, over thirty decades after their deaths. Captor was born in 1895 in Chicago, Illinois to Mituna Captor, a former physicist. Megido was born in 1897 to a Japanese immigrant named Megido Damara, whose husband died when Aradia was young._

_Many of Captor’s works have themes of nihilism and duality. Megido’s themes are of death and the passage of time. They met a few years into their careers and grew close, although Captor initially perceived her as a rival._

_They eloped in the fall of 1933, Megido citing that, “Autumn is the time of rot, when the leaves stumble downward to the earth...It is a turning point of the seasons, and soon the trees that alive will be indistinguishable from the dead ones[...]making us question, “Will I look dead while I am still alive? Will I look alive while I am still dead?”_

_Captor and Megido passed aged 81 and 79, respectively, and the time of their deaths were estimated to be within only a few hours of each other._

_This audio guide will take you on a tour of Megido and Captor’s artwork, ranging from 1913 to 1976. We do hope you enjoy._

* * *

Sollux’s life was currently mediocre. If it was assigned a numerical value, it would currently be rated a 2/5. He had a shitty-but-bearable roommate by the name of Karkat Vantas, a shitty-but-average apartment in New York City, and he made shitty-but-okay art. His life was shitty but alright. Two out of five.

“My life is two out of five,” he said aloud to the darkened room.

He could imagine Karkat rolling his eyes from where he was lying. “It’s always two out of fucking something,” his roomate snapped back. “Two out of ten, two out of six, one out of two, two out of two. Jesus pantshitting fuck, I didn’t know your ridiculous duality thing was actually a thing you incorporated into your fucking speech patterns, shithole.”

“That fourth one isn’t a ‘two out of fucking something’,” Sollux pointed out, not bothering to defend the ‘duality thing’ as Karkat oh-so-subtly put it or even question if a human person could be considered a ‘shithole’. An argument that would be reserved for another time. He was facing the ceiling, fingers, tapping out a two-count beat, one that would be silent except for the knowledge he knew it was there.

Karkat flopped over on his mattress. (Sollux could tell by the sound of the springs creaking underneath his shifting weight.) “It’s the same basic fucking concept, so fuck you and you bitching.”

Sollux huffed. There was no use in arguing with Karkat, and he didn’t have the energy for it tonight. He rolled over, turning his back to Karkat’s side of the room. “Holy shit, KK--Karkat,” he amended, trying to play off the nickname as a stutter. “Can we just not get into it tonight?”

Karkat huffed in return. “Fine.”

Sollux stared at the wall. He hadn’t been able to paint, lately. It was if there was a literal block there. A literal fucking artist’s block. And he didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, seeing as he had like one friend, who wouldn’t get it.

Karkat was critic, not a painter or a sculptor or a writer or whatever. He lashed into your works, usually, but he didn’t mean it. Sollux could always tell when he really meant it.

Then Sollux could no longer keep open his eyes and was forced under, into the sea of sleep.

* * *

 

Aradia, in a different apartment, in a different building, however, was having a very different night. She was awake in her studio, painting. She would later scrap this painting, but she was painting it right now. It was exactly 10:25 at night. She perched on a stool, her pale legs wrapped around its wooden ones, red gown sliding off of one shoulder.

Her strokes were wide and fluid, the brush dipped in a diluted blue flowing in a curved line. Her face was not concentrated, but relaxed and unconcerned. She might have been listening to a soothing piano piece for all the worry on her face.

The painting’s subject was a seascape. Its artist, though, had never seen the ocean except in paintings and pictures, so it was more of an idea of what the sea looked like.

She was content with her life, or at least she could convince herself that she was. She lived alone in a simple apartment decorated with trinkets and a side-room that she turned into a studio. She had acquaintances. She still exchanged letters with her mother. She painted.

Of course, painting was not her dream job, but it was a close second. Her third choice job was a mortician, which had given her more than few stares when she’d brought that up. She didn’t mind, though.

She stopped midstroke and her face twisted itself into a frown, breaking the palid calm. The pleasantness has disappeared, taken by something icy that she could not define with words.

When she was younger, she would go out to the backyard and dig her fingers into the dirt until the feeling was gone. Her mother would come out, wiping her long-fingered hands on a white towel and sitting on the wooden rocker on the porch and call out, “Ima, nani shite iru?” _Now, what are you doing?_

And Aradia would look up, up to her elbows in soil and a streak of mud across her cheek, and grin and say, “Hone o sagashite iru.” _Looking for bones._

And her mother would just give a rare smile (or at least, rare outside of the house) and shake her head and say, “Yappa ne.” _Of course._

But now she lived in an apartment in the city, and there was no garden she could go to when the cold feeling came.

So she sighed, unwrapped her legs from the stool’s wooden ones, adjusted her nightgown, and went to bed.

* * *

It was the stage where you were still half-submerged in dream. Half on a mattress, half on a paper ocean. He closed his blurry eyes, not willing to leave it behind right. He was just getting to good bit, where the f--

Two hands on his back, he barely had time to register, before he hit the floor with more of a thump than a yelp, uncomfortably teetering on the edge of it for only a half of a second.

He groaned, still swathed in blankets.

“Get your lazy ass up.”

Sollux groaned on the ground, sitting up slowly. The blanket slid off of his thin torso, revealing bony ribs.

Fuck. A headache stabbed at the inside of his head, all throughout his face. He started to lay back down, back to the blanket.

“Nope,” he mumbled, tongue thick in his mouth.

“Don’t fucking  _ nope  _ me,” Karkat snarled, nudging Sollux none-too-gently in the ribs. “We’ve got places to go to.”

Sollux ran his tongue over his teeth. “Like what.” he half-murmured.

“You don’t remember? Fucking typical.”

Shit, did he have an actual adult responsibility today?

...Actually, he didn’t give a shit.

“You should,” Karkat spat. Oh fuck, did he say that last part out loud? “Leijon’s art gallery is today.”

Oh. They’d promised Pyrope’s older sister they’d attend, didn’t they.

Sollux let out a guttural sigh and rolled over, the blankets rolling with him, and stared up at the the ceiling, sighing, pressing out all of the air in her lungs until it was borderline painful. Karkat snickered. “Get ready, asshat.”

Sollux sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Where are my glasses,” he mumbled thickly, blinking blurried eyes. Something hit him in the face. “Ow.” He unfolded them and placed them onto his face. The room shifted into focus, just in time for him to see Karkat stomping off (to where? the bathroom? because that was the only other place in their apartment).

Sollux straightened to his full height of 5’4 and half-stumbled to the pile of his clean clothes Karkat had been harping for him to pick up for the last week. He smoothed out the herringbone suit jacket (Karkat sputtered at him, saying  _ that won’t get rid of the fucking wrinkles _ ) and bent back down to pick up the undershirt and matching pants, folding then over his arm. Karkat, naturally, was already dressed, arms crossed and a scowl on his face. Sollux slunk off to the bathroom, feeling his eyes on his back.

Sollux closed the door with a click, and pulled on the white undershirt over his skinny frame. Then the jacket, then the pants. “Where’s my tie?” he shouted.

There was a rustling sound from the other side of the door, then a yellow tie with the matching pocket cloth was shoved under the door.

“Thanks.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Go ride your own cock, Captor.”

Sollux snickered and picked them off the floor, tucking the cloth into his jacket pocket and tying the tie around his neck. He reopened the door to see Karkat waiting, arms folded, tapping his foot, like he was some fine rich gentleman waiting on his chauffeur, and not some broke art critic known for writing  _ the  _ most scathing reviews known to humankind in select circles. He reached out to straighten Sollux’s tie before stomping out. Sollux, much quieter, followed him.

* * *

Aradia didn’t know how to explain it, but Meulin and Nepeta were the most alike and different pair of siblings she knew. It was their aura, she thought.

Meulin was considerably taller than Nepeta (who was here too, with Terezi Pyrope and Equius Zahhak). She danced around the room, practically, going from guest to guest, shaking their hands and thanking them, with obvious cat puns slipped in.

Aradia stood in the corner, outside of the throng of people. Leijon weaves through the crowd, heading right towards her.

“Megido! So delighted you clawed come.” Her voice was too loud—Aradia had heard she was almost deaf. Meulin clasped the shorter woman’s hand in hers. Aradia placed her free hand on Meulin’s with a wide smile.

“Of course! I wouldn’t dare miss it.” She had to practically crane her neck to look Meulin in the eye.

Meulin laughed, loud. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Good, good.” She released Aradia, gave her a bone-breaking pat on the shoulder, and went off to greet the newest guests.

Aradia’s eyes followed Meulin’s bobbing head of hair. Two men had just stepped in. The shorter one’s was wearing a hat pulled low, almost obscuring the upper half of his face. The taller one, she noticed, had poor posture, almost making him look as small as his companion. He wore a pair of thin ovaular glasses, and, from what she could tell, wanted to be anywhere but here.

Normally, she rarely actively engaged in conversation, preferring them to come to her. And when they did, they seemed to quickly find an excuse to leave, for a reason unfathomable to herself. But these two were intriguing.

She made a note of them. When Meulin left, she decided she would approach them.

She bounced on her toes, garnering a few strange looks. It was a very good thing that she’d come here. She could feel it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first work 2019 is arasol yeet


End file.
